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N A R R A T I V E 



Capture axd Murder 



Major James TV^ilson 




km: A I) KIOI'OKE THK i»IKK COL'XTV HISTOKU AT. 
SOCIKTY. JA>riJARY 20, lOOG 



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J 



t»ESS A. R. FLEMING PRINTING CO . ST. LOUH 




MAJOR JAMES WILSON 



aRT> M. .S. ]>!. CAV 



Born, May 28, 1834, in Prince George County, Maryland. 
Murdered by Price's raiders in Franklin County, Mis- 
souri, October 3, 1864. 



NARRATIVE 



<>l'^ TlIK 



Capture axd Murder 



Major James Wilson 



By Cyrus A. Peterso:x 

M 
President, The IMissocri Histobicai, Societv 



READ BEFORE THE PIKE COU:VTY HISTORICAXi 
SOCIETY, JA:XXJARY 26, 190G 



EaT7 



By Iiau^fet. 



A NARRATION OF THE CAPTURE AND MURDER 
OF MAJOR JAMES WILSON IN 1864. 

Mr. President and Members of the Pike County Historical 
Society : 

At the invitation of your honorable Secretary, I have made 
a brief chronological arrangement of the events interwoven 
with the capture and murder of Major James Wilson and 
six soldiers of his command in the fall of 1864, and as a pre- 
lude to the statement of unpleasant facts to be herein later re- 
lated it cannot be improper to offer some historic account of 
the state of affairs existing in Missouri at that time. 
Younger generations \\\\\ scarcely be able to comprehend 
the actual conditions then prevailing, and the true character 
of the raiders and their commander, hence the writer will 
draw upon none but Confederate sources in depicting the 
hopeless depravity of the marauders under Sterling Price 
who perpetrated this foul crime. 

The Secession Governor of Missouri, Thomas C. Rey- 
nolds, wa^ote his recollections of the events of the war soon 
after its close, and in describing the preparations for the 
Price raid, which among other things was to install him as 
Governor at Jefferson City, he narrates the incident of a 
visit to Price's camp in Arkansas, using the following lan- 
guage: "While visiting some of General Price's officers at 
his wagon camp, the conversation turned on the Unionists 
of Missouri, 'Old Captain Price,' a very worthy relative of 
General Price and a complete echo oif his talk, being con- 
stantly near him, was present, and also Col. Clay Taylor. 
I forget who were the othefs. They were both very sav- 
age in expressing their intentions of personal venegeance 

5 



on some they respectively named as having done them 
wrongs. Without entering intO' any discussion, I suggested 
to them that the treatment of the Unionists was a most 
grave and delicate question, which the Confederate and State 
Governments alone could decide; and that I believed that' 
even they. Col. Taylor and Capt. Price, would be in such 
excellent humor on being restored to their homes, that they 
would forgive even their worst enemies. I may also have 
added (though I am not positive) that at any rate I trusted 
they were too' good citizens to disturb anyone the Governor 
of the State might pardon. But Captain Price declared 
there was one man whom he would avenge himself on any- 
how and Col. Taylor said that there was another whoi he 
also would take personal vengeance on in any event." 

With this inhuman spirit in the ascendancy at Price's 
headquarters no one can be surprised that it prevailed 
throughout the undisciplined rabble most appropriately 
termed by Governor Reynolds at the time as a "Calmuck 
horde" which made up Price's aggregate of thirty thousand 
men. 

Thirty years after the war, Captain T. J. Mackey, of 
Price's staff, in writing of the raid through Missouri in 
September and October, 1864, said : 

"I was assigned tO' duty as its (the army's) Chief Engi- 
neer, a most unwelcome service to me, as the war in that 
section had degenerated into a fierce vendetta and for three 
years bands of armed marauders marching under the flag 
of the Confederacy had committed atrocities which stamped 
the State as the sink of American civilization." 

Describing the battle of Pilot Knob, Capt. Mackey says: 

"In resisting our advance through the pass. Major Wilson 
was captured with six of his men and they were all barbar- 
ously murdered a few days later by soldiers of Marmaduke's 
Division led by one of their field officers." 

John N. Edwards, a member of Joe Shelby's staff, pub- 
lished a volume of gasconade a few years after the war, en- 



titled "Snelby and His Men/' and in speaking of the mur- 
der of Major Wilson and his men he says : 

"It is by no means certain that his death was authorized 
by General Price, although, as the Commander-in-Chief he 
was to a limited degree responsible for it." Further on in 
his book he speaks of the great number of prisoners mur- 
dered in the latter part of the raid, and says : "They sleep 
in unknown graves from Jefferson City to Newtonia." 

In a later essay, Edwards speaks of the raid and its com- 
mander as follows : "That last march of 1864, the stupidest, 
wildest, wantonest, wickedest march ever made by a bad 
general who had a voice like a lion and a spring like a 
guinea pig." 

To put the minds of incredulous persons at ease, none but 
Confederate authorities have been cited in the preceding 
statement and the writer now begs tO' say that he has inter- 
viewed hundreds of eye-witnesses and participants in the 
events chronologically set forth in the succeeding paragraphs 
of this paper, and has obtained written statements from 
many of them. The company rolls of all org"anizations op- 
posed to Price's advance into Missouri in 186-i have been 
carefully studied and the events related may be accepted as 
accurate. 

During this long search it has developed that from the 
time that Price entered Missouri on Septeml>er 19th, 1864, 
until October 3, 1864, thirty-five prisoners had been assas- 
sinated and brutal attempts had been made on two> others, 
who fortunately escaped. The writer has succeeded in iden- 
tifying all of these thirty-five martyrs but two, and now 
scarcely hopes that their identity will ever be recovered. 

It will thus appear that the murder of Major Wilson was 
merely an incident in the greatest carnival of crime ever 
enacted on American soil. The following is a correct chro- 
nology of the immediate events leading to Major Wilson's 
martyrdom. 

In September, 1864, he was in command of a military 

7 



sub-district in Southeast Missouri, with headquarters at Pi- 
lot Knob. On the 17th of that month he ordered a scouting 
party under Lieut. Erich Pape of company K of his regi- 
ment (Third M. S. M.) to go south until he had located 
the head of Price's invading column, which was then known 
to be coming into Missouri, and then return and report. 
The scout under Lieut. Pape consisted of company K and a 
detail from company I of the same regiment, under com- 
mand of Sergt. Simon U. Branstetter. At Patterson, Mo., 
where Capt. Robert McElroy, of company D, Third M. S. 
M. cavalry, was in command of the advanced post, a few 
men were detached from McElroy's company oh September 
18th and added to- Lieut. Pape's scouting party. Also a 
few men (mounted) from the 4:7th Missouri Infantry, under 
Lieut. James S. McMurtry. The scouting party then con- 
sisted of 86 men and three commissioned officers : Lieuts. 
Pape and Brawner of company K, Third M. S. M. cavalry, 
and Lieut. James S. McMurtry of company A. 47th Mis- 
souri Infantry. 

By making a forced march the scout reached Doniphan 
in the forenoon, of September 19th, where it met the ad- 
vance of Price's army, consisting of about 150 or 200 men 
under Lieut. Col. Rector Johnson of General Marmaduke's 
Division. A vigorous charge was made intO' the Rebel com- 
mand and Col. Johnson and his men fell back, in confusion 
with Lieut. Pape pursuing almost to the State line. Pape 
then returned through Doniphan and at nightfall went into 
camp at a point ten miles north, or northeast, of that town 
at the Vandiver farm, near Ponder's Mill, on Little Black 
River.. 

This was in what was then familiarly called "Secesh 
Country" there being none but Southern sympathizers liv- 
ing anywhere near, and while Lieut. Pape took the ordi- 
nary precaution to post camp guards, he did not take into 
consideration the dangerous element of non-combatants liv- 
ing all around his bivouac. On the morning of September 



20th he and his command were aroused by a Confederate 
force of several hundred under Lieut. Col. Rector Johnson 
closing- in on them from the east, west and north. Hastily- 
mounting, Lieut. Pape gave orders to his men to cut their 
way through the Rebel line to the north, leading the charge 
himself. This was successfully done, but Lieut. William 
Brawner was left behind dismounted and wounded, and 
from all that could be afterward learned he was murdered 
as soon as he fell into the hands of his captors. 

Sergt. Branstetter was bringing up the rear of Rape's 
command with the detail from company I, and he and six of 
his men were captured by the Retels closing up their lines 
where Rape had cut his way through. The six men of 
company I who were captured with Branstetter were Cor- 
poral W'm. W. Gourley, and Privates Hiram Berry, Oscar 
O. Gilbert, Wm. C. Grotts, Wm. Scaggs and John W. Shew. 

Immediately upon giving up his side arms, Sergt. Bran- 
stetter was shot down in cold blood, a ball passing through 
his right lung and the shock knocking him senseless to the 
ground. When he recovered consciousness the Rebels were 
stripping his clothes from his body which they denuded 
completely, except for the badly blood-soaked shirt cover- 
ing his trunk. They dug a shallow grave by his side in 
which they intended to bury him, but observing that he was 
still breathing, they covered his body with fence rails and 
rode away, leaving him to his fate. After one of the most 
remarkable and torturing experiences ever undergone by 
any mortal, Branstetter recovered and is today living near 
Vandalia, Mo. The other six men of company I were 
marched on foot as prisoners, being compelled to keep pace 
with cavalry guards until October 3, 1864, when they were 
disposed of by parole or murder. 

On September 22nd. Shelby's Division of Price's army 
reached Patterson, Mo., driving out Capt, McElroy's small 
command and capturing seven prisoners, two men of com- 
pany K, Third M. S. M. cavalry, and five men of the 47th 

9 



Missouri Infantry. These seven prisoners were all wan- 
tonly murdered soon after they were captured. Shelby in 
his official report, with brutal frankness, says they "were 
captured and killed." From this point forward scores of 
bodies, the corpses of prisoners most brutally murdered, 
marked the trail of Price's army through Missouri and Kan- 
sas, but these cannot be treated in detail in a limited paper 
like this. 

On September 26th Price's army concentrated at Arca- 
dia, and on the 27th the battle of Pilot Knob was fought. 
In this battle Major Wilson held the left of the skirmish 
line, being located on Pilot Knob with about 200 men, dis- 
mounted and deployed. At that time he was suffering from 
a slight scalp wound received in the skirmishing the day 
before, in the lower end of Arcadia Valley, which had 
caused considerable hemorrhage, but had not kept him out 
of the saddle or off the field. About 2 P. M. on the 27th, 
Price's army made its desperate, but disastrous, assault on 
Fort Davidson, and Fagan's Division having the right of 
the line swept over Pilot Knob mountain, dislodging Major 
Wilson's handful of men and capturing Major Wilson and 
twoi men of his regiment, John Holabaugh of company K 
and William Axford of Company H. These three were 
started under escort toward Arcadia, where Price's head- 
quarters had been established, and where the prisoners ac- 
cumulated in the raid up to this point were held in corral. 
They had not proceeded far until the repulsed and demoral- 
ized troops of Fagan's Division swept down the valley in a 
frantic stampede in which the guards over the prisoners 
joined, leaving Wilson and the twO' enlisted men in this wild 
mob of rebels. Major Wilson then turned back towards the 
fort with the two men, and was met by Lieut. Col. John P. 
Bull, who' had just led 200 picked men of his Arkansas 
regiment against the fort and had left 42 oi them dead or 
mortally wounded on the field. Though in full retreat with 
his men, Col. Bull was composed enough toi recognize a 

10 



Federal Major and two privates as a strange spectacle stem- 
ming their way in the contrary direction through the fleeing 
rebel host, and at once took charge of them and turned them 
into the prison corral at Arcadia. 

On September 2Sth, Dr. S. Dl Carpenter left the hospital 
at Pilot Knob, and going tO' the prison corral, which had 
been moved up tO' that point oii that date, dressed Major 
Wilson's wotmd. This was probably the last surgical atten- 
tion he received and from this time forward he did not re- 
ceive a single act of courtesy or civility from his captors. 
He was compelled to march on foot Avith citizens and enlisted 
men who had been taken prisoners, and keep pace with cav- 
alry guards through five days march, covering a total dis- 
tance O'f 80 miles, although he was a field officer; while an 
uninjured line officer, who had been taken prisoner at the 
same time as Wilson, was furnished an ambulance in which 
to ride. Eacli night the prisoners were corralled, or put 
under a chain guard as near Price's headquarters as physical 
conditions and topography of the ground would permit, and 
thus the march was conducted from Pilot Knob to a point 
ten miles west of Union, Missouri, in Franklin County, 
where the "Calmuck horde" arrived on the evening of Oc- 
tober 2nd. During these five days march the prisoners had 
to wade many small streams, and other larger ones, such as 
the Meramec River and some of its tributaries, which added 
materially to their hardships and discomforts. Price's army 
having no Provost Marshal General in its organization up 
to this time, the accumulated prisoners w^ere under charge of 
Col. John T. Crisp, who had been assigned to the duty of 
looking after them. 

On the morning of October 3rd, 1864, before breaking 
camp for the day's march tow-ard Jefferson City, and 
while the prisoners were being held under heavy guard, 
within 40 or 50 yards of Price's headquarters, the guerilla 
leader. Col. Timothy Reeves, of Fagan's Division, and 
another officer whose identity has never been ascertained, 

11 



rode up to the prisoners and ordered them tO' fall intO' Itne 
in the road^ facing the two Rebel ofificers. One of them 
held a slip of paper or a memorandum in his hand and 
riding slowly along the line each prisoner was asked to give 
his name, with his rank and command, if he was a soldier. 
Each prisoner whoi gave his command as being the Third 
M. S. M. cavalry was ordered to step two paces to the front. 
In making correct responses in this manner, Major Wilson 
and five enlisted men of his regiment sealed their fate, as 
the two steps forward meant their death. The five enlisted 
men were Corpl. Wm. W. Gourley and Privts. Wm. C. 
Grotts, ^^^m. Scaggs and John W. Shew of Co. I, Third M, 
S. M., and John Holabaugh of company K, same regiment. 
Three more men of the Third M. S. M. cavalry remained in 
the line of prisoners, but by a sort of psychological impulse 
realized that a correct account of themselves meant their 
early execution, and like Peter on the night of the last 
supper denied their identity. Hiram Berry and Oscar O. 
Gilbert, of company I, by hasty agreement between them- 
selves, gave their regiment as the 17th Illinois Cavalry, and 
they were not asked to step forward. William Axford of 
Company H, was farther down the line among strangers, 
and when he noted that all members of his regiment were 
being stepped to the front, he spoke to the man next in line 
oil his right, John Zoller of company B. 14th Iowa Infantry, 
and said : "They are going tO' shoot all of the Third M. S. 
M. prisoners, what shall I do?" Zoller hastily replied: 
"Give the same company and regiment that I do-." This 
Axford did and he was saved. 

While this tragic scene was being enacted, an unfortu- 
nate prisoner, to^ this day unknown, thinking no- doubt that 
members of the third M. S. M were being selected for first 
squad to be paroled (for the question of paroling the pris- 
oners had been discussed that morning), undoubtedly gave 
this regiment as the command tO' which he belonged and 
was stepped to the front condemned tO' death. Who' he was 

12 



or what command he belonged to will perhaps never be 
known, but in all probability he was a member of the 47th 
Missouri Infantry or of Battery H, Second Missouri Light 
Artillery, as both of these organizations had several men 
marked first as missing and later as deserters, after the bat- 
tle of Pilot Knob, who^ were never afterward heard of, either 
by return tO' their commands or toi their homes. 

Major Wilson and the six enlisted men who had been step- 
ped to the front w'ere marched away in charge of the shoot- 
ing squad, right in the presence of General Price and his 
staff and the 400 or more prisoners, taken over a hill through 
an old abandoned field, and the volley fired which killed 
them, was distinctly heard and some oi the prisoners even 
claimed to have seen the smoke from the guns rise above 
the top of the hill. 

The other prisoners w'ere all paroled Avithin the next hour 
or two and given their liberty to return tO' their commands 
or toi civilization, by wdiatever means they could devise. And 
then one of the most unaccountable events of the Civil War 
occurred. These prisoners broke up into irregular squads 
and started across the country, north, east and southeast, ac- 
cording to their individual election, publishing the news that 
Major Wilson and six of his men had been taken out and 
shot, at a point ten miles west of Union, and two days later 
this information was officially communicated to military 
headquarters in St. Louis. By that time (Octol^er 5th) the 
vicinity of the murder w-as again under Federal control, and 
while several dozen of the paroled prisoners lived in the 
immediate neighborhood of the point where the murder oc- 
curred, no move was made tO' recover and care for the bodies 
of the murdered men, and none of the released prisoners 
went back to the ground tO' see the result of the volley fired 
by the execution squad. Every one connected with the Fed- 
eral forces, from General Rosecranz down tO' the paroled 
militiamen of Franklin County, seemed to be stupefied by 
the rapidly occurring events of the day, or hypnotized by a 

13 



hope that the facts reported could not be true l>ecause of their 
revolting atrocity, and thus the matter was dropped. 

Three weeks later a youth of the neighborhood while 
straying through the old field hunting persimmons, came 
upon the bodies of Major Wilson and the six men, toO' far 
decomposed to be recognizable, except by their clothing and 
insignia of rank or by papers on the bodies. 

The matter of holding an inquest over the bodies and af- 
terward consigning them tO' decent burial among- friends is 
tooi well known to- require recapitulation here. The writer, 
however, would call attention toi the official statement made 
at the time that one of the bodies found with Major A\'ilson 
was dressed in an artillery bugler's uniform, and as none of 
the identified men were entitled to wear such insignia, an 
extended search was made by the writer with the hope that 
this clue might lead tO' the identity of the unknown sixth 
man. A careful analysis of the forces opposed to^ Price's 
invasion of Missouri up to this point, developed the fact that 
only seven men had been engaged in this resistance who 
wore artillery bugler's uniforms. These were two buglers 
in Co. I and two in Co. K of the Third M. S. M. Cav. and 
three in battery H, of the Second Missouri Light Artillery. 
But those seven men are all accounted for on their company 
rolls at the end of the war and the last clue on which a hope 
could be entertained for the identification of this unknown 
victim of outlaw^ vengeance had vanished. 

Cyrus A. Petkrson. 
St. Louis, Mo., January 18th. 1006. 



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